Peer Schouten
Biographic Data
| ID | 293089 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peer Schouten |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peer |
| FAMILY NAME | Schouten |
| SIGNATURE | SCHOUTEN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Danish Institute for International Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7453-6463 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 193 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Roadblock Geographies: A Typology of Extraction, Circulation, and Authority in Conflict
Roadblocks and checkpoints have become ubiquitous features of conflict‐affected borderlands, yet their political and economic significance remains unevenly theorised. While existing scholarship has documented their role in financing armed actors and shaping everyday mobility, less attention has been paid to how roadblocks relate to the underlying transport geographies within which they operate. This article advances debates on extractivism, circu…
The Politics of Passage: Studying Checkpoints and Claim Making in Conflict‐affected Settings
Roadblocks, or checkpoints, are obligatory passage points that are erected by entities claiming authority over a given crossing. They are often the most common everyday interface between civilians and armed actors in conflict‐affected contexts, but are overlooked in studies on either trade or authority amidst conflict. This article, which introduces a special issue on the topic, argues that roadblocks are a useful empirical entry point to questio…
Isbaaro: Checkpoints and World Making beyond the State in Somalia
This article examines the dynamics of checkpoint authority in Somalia, focusing on how kinship, mobility and checkpoint practices intersect to shape political and social orders. Challenging the notion that checkpoint governance is either an expression of state‐like power or indicative of the state's absence, the authors argue that Somali checkpoints ( isbaaro ) must be understood in relation to the militarization and commercialization of clan‐bas…
Buffering State-making: Geopolitics in the Sudd Marshlands of South Sudan
This paper explores the history and ongoing transformation of the South Sudanese Sudd marshlands as a buffer zone in a variety of subsequent projects of domination and their subversion. Its argument will be that the contemporary geopolitics of the Sudd cannot be understood properly without unwinding the historical layers of contestation and conflict around these projects of control and their reversal, projects which have sought to shape and have …
Response to Daniel E. Agbiboa’s Review of Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Infrastructural frontiers: Terrains of resistance at the material edge of the state
This introduction to the special issue lays out some of the theoretical underpinnings of the notion of the ‘infrastructural frontier’. We begin by considering infrastructures as material geographies of power, before moving on to highlight how broader processes of order-making and resistance often become operational at the material edges of states: the places where transport and communication networks peter out and give way to terrains less amenab…
Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa
There are so many roadblocks in Central Africa that it is hard to find a road that does not have one. Based on research in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR), Peer Schouten maps more than a thousand of these roadblocks to show how communities, rebels and state security forces forge resistance and power out of control over these narrow points of passage. Schouten reveals the connections between these road…
Paths of authority, roads of resistance: Ambiguous rural infrastructure and slippery stabilization in eastern DR Congo
Broadening 'business', widening 'peace: A New Research Agenda on Business and Peace-Building
What role does business play in peace-building and conflict reduction? This special issue tackles this complex question, exploring varied business efforts to bring peace through six rigorous qualitative cases in Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Somaliland, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador. Three main findings cut across this issue. First, local context is paramount to success; there is no one universal formula that a regulator…
Electrifying the green peace? Electrification, conservation and conflict in Eastern Congo
Large-scale infrastructure in conflict-affected states is often seen as a crucial means to pursue economic growth, poverty reduction, and increasingly, peace-building. Legitimated by an emergent ‘Business for Peace’ agenda, a variety of private actors now also engages in such infrastructure projects. The Virunga Alliance is such an initiative which aims to tackle the interlinked problems of poverty, conservation and conflict in the east of DR Con…
Roadblock politics in Central Africa
A frequent sight along many roads, roadblocks form a banal yet persistent element across the margins of contemporary global logistical landscapes. How, this article asks, can we come to terms with roadblocks as a logistical form of power? Based on an ongoing mapping of roadblocks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, it sketches a political geography of "roadblock politics": a spatial pattern of control concentrate…
States of circulation: Logistics off the beaten path
The business–peace nexus: ‘Business for Peace’ and the Reconfiguration of the Public/Private Divide in Global Governance
Concrete approaches to peace: Infrastructure as Peacebuilding
Do roads literally lead to peace? While seemingly a strange question to ask, today's peacebuilders certainly seem to think so. After decades of focus on questions of governance, today, instead, infrastructure primes in state- and peacebuilding missions in many fragile and conflict-affected societies. Peacebuilding efforts in places ranging from Somalia to Afghanistan to the Congo are, to a considerable extent, interventions in the built environme…
The Return of the Theorists: Dialogues with Great Thinkers in International Relations
Contemporary International Relations is as much a conversation between the living and the dead as it is among the living. Its debates are thoroughly rooted in and shaped by the thought of many bygone
Security as controversy: Reassembling security at Amsterdam Airport
Critical approaches to security have come to define themselves against mainstream security studies by not a priori assuming what security is, but rather taking it as an ‘essentially contested concept’. Yet, as evidenced by the way in which recent ‘turns’ in the field have played out in the debate around airport security, ontological assumptions about security tend to restrict the scope of empirical analysis, with airport security being studied as…
Transnational Companies and Security Governance: Hybrid practices in a postcolonial world
One of the key transformations of the post-Cold War period has been the rising significance of multinational corporations in the liberalizing global economy. Arguably the engines of economic globalization, multinational corporations have also increased their political footprint across the globe. This footprint is the focal point of a wide range of international governance initiatives, aimed at turning multinationals into good ‘corporate citizens’…
The Materiality of State Failure: Social Contract Theory, Infrastructure and Governmental Power in Congo
Congo’s state failure is usually analysed in terms of a ‘broken social contract’, reflecting the degree to which mainstream understandings of state failure are conditioned by classical social contract theory. This article takes a different route to understanding Congo’s predicament by building on insights from actor-network theory (ANT). ANT’s insistence on society as a socio-material entanglement, it shows, translates into increasing attention t…
Security as controversy: Reassembling security at Amsterdam Airport
Critical approaches to security have come to define themselves against mainstream security studies by not a priori assuming what security is, but rather taking it as an ‘essentially contested concept’. Yet, as evidenced by the way in which recent ‘turns’ in the field have played out in the debate around airport security, ontological assumptions about security tend to restrict the scope of empirical analysis, with airport security being studied as…
States of circulation: Logistics off the beaten path
Roadblock politics in Central Africa
A frequent sight along many roads, roadblocks form a banal yet persistent element across the margins of contemporary global logistical landscapes. How, this article asks, can we come to terms with roadblocks as a logistical form of power? Based on an ongoing mapping of roadblocks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, it sketches a political geography of "roadblock politics": a spatial pattern of control concentrate…
The Materiality of State Failure: Social Contract Theory, Infrastructure and Governmental Power in Congo
Congo’s state failure is usually analysed in terms of a ‘broken social contract’, reflecting the degree to which mainstream understandings of state failure are conditioned by classical social contract theory. This article takes a different route to understanding Congo’s predicament by building on insights from actor-network theory (ANT). ANT’s insistence on society as a socio-material entanglement, it shows, translates into increasing attention t…
Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa
There are so many roadblocks in Central Africa that it is hard to find a road that does not have one. Based on research in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR), Peer Schouten maps more than a thousand of these roadblocks to show how communities, rebels and state security forces forge resistance and power out of control over these narrow points of passage. Schouten reveals the connections between these road…
Concrete approaches to peace: Infrastructure as Peacebuilding
Do roads literally lead to peace? While seemingly a strange question to ask, today's peacebuilders certainly seem to think so. After decades of focus on questions of governance, today, instead, infrastructure primes in state- and peacebuilding missions in many fragile and conflict-affected societies. Peacebuilding efforts in places ranging from Somalia to Afghanistan to the Congo are, to a considerable extent, interventions in the built environme…
Infrastructural frontiers: Terrains of resistance at the material edge of the state
This introduction to the special issue lays out some of the theoretical underpinnings of the notion of the ‘infrastructural frontier’. We begin by considering infrastructures as material geographies of power, before moving on to highlight how broader processes of order-making and resistance often become operational at the material edges of states: the places where transport and communication networks peter out and give way to terrains less amenab…
Paths of authority, roads of resistance: Ambiguous rural infrastructure and slippery stabilization in eastern DR Congo
The business–peace nexus: ‘Business for Peace’ and the Reconfiguration of the Public/Private Divide in Global Governance
Electrifying the green peace? Electrification, conservation and conflict in Eastern Congo
Large-scale infrastructure in conflict-affected states is often seen as a crucial means to pursue economic growth, poverty reduction, and increasingly, peace-building. Legitimated by an emergent ‘Business for Peace’ agenda, a variety of private actors now also engages in such infrastructure projects. The Virunga Alliance is such an initiative which aims to tackle the interlinked problems of poverty, conservation and conflict in the east of DR Con…
Broadening 'business', widening 'peace: A New Research Agenda on Business and Peace-Building
What role does business play in peace-building and conflict reduction? This special issue tackles this complex question, exploring varied business efforts to bring peace through six rigorous qualitative cases in Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Somaliland, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador. Three main findings cut across this issue. First, local context is paramount to success; there is no one universal formula that a regulator…
Buffering State-making: Geopolitics in the Sudd Marshlands of South Sudan
This paper explores the history and ongoing transformation of the South Sudanese Sudd marshlands as a buffer zone in a variety of subsequent projects of domination and their subversion. Its argument will be that the contemporary geopolitics of the Sudd cannot be understood properly without unwinding the historical layers of contestation and conflict around these projects of control and their reversal, projects which have sought to shape and have …
The Materiality of State Failure: Social Contract Theory, Infrastructure and Governmental Power in Congo
Congo’s state failure is usually analysed in terms of a ‘broken social contract’, reflecting the degree to which mainstream understandings of state failure are conditioned by classical social contract theory. This article takes a different route to understanding Congo’s predicament by building on insights from actor-network theory (ANT). ANT’s insistence on society as a socio-material entanglement, it shows, translates into increasing attention t…
Security as controversy: Reassembling security at Amsterdam Airport
Critical approaches to security have come to define themselves against mainstream security studies by not a priori assuming what security is, but rather taking it as an ‘essentially contested concept’. Yet, as evidenced by the way in which recent ‘turns’ in the field have played out in the debate around airport security, ontological assumptions about security tend to restrict the scope of empirical analysis, with airport security being studied as…
Transnational Companies and Security Governance: Hybrid practices in a postcolonial world
One of the key transformations of the post-Cold War period has been the rising significance of multinational corporations in the liberalizing global economy. Arguably the engines of economic globalization, multinational corporations have also increased their political footprint across the globe. This footprint is the focal point of a wide range of international governance initiatives, aimed at turning multinationals into good ‘corporate citizens’…
The Return of the Theorists: Dialogues with Great Thinkers in International Relations
Contemporary International Relations is as much a conversation between the living and the dead as it is among the living. Its debates are thoroughly rooted in and shaped by the thought of many bygone
The business–peace nexus: ‘Business for Peace’ and the Reconfiguration of the Public/Private Divide in Global Governance
Concrete approaches to peace: Infrastructure as Peacebuilding
Do roads literally lead to peace? While seemingly a strange question to ask, today's peacebuilders certainly seem to think so. After decades of focus on questions of governance, today, instead, infrastructure primes in state- and peacebuilding missions in many fragile and conflict-affected societies. Peacebuilding efforts in places ranging from Somalia to Afghanistan to the Congo are, to a considerable extent, interventions in the built environme…
Broadening 'business', widening 'peace: A New Research Agenda on Business and Peace-Building
What role does business play in peace-building and conflict reduction? This special issue tackles this complex question, exploring varied business efforts to bring peace through six rigorous qualitative cases in Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Somaliland, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador. Three main findings cut across this issue. First, local context is paramount to success; there is no one universal formula that a regulator…
Electrifying the green peace? Electrification, conservation and conflict in Eastern Congo
Large-scale infrastructure in conflict-affected states is often seen as a crucial means to pursue economic growth, poverty reduction, and increasingly, peace-building. Legitimated by an emergent ‘Business for Peace’ agenda, a variety of private actors now also engages in such infrastructure projects. The Virunga Alliance is such an initiative which aims to tackle the interlinked problems of poverty, conservation and conflict in the east of DR Con…
Roadblock politics in Central Africa
A frequent sight along many roads, roadblocks form a banal yet persistent element across the margins of contemporary global logistical landscapes. How, this article asks, can we come to terms with roadblocks as a logistical form of power? Based on an ongoing mapping of roadblocks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, it sketches a political geography of "roadblock politics": a spatial pattern of control concentrate…
States of circulation: Logistics off the beaten path
Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa
There are so many roadblocks in Central Africa that it is hard to find a road that does not have one. Based on research in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR), Peer Schouten maps more than a thousand of these roadblocks to show how communities, rebels and state security forces forge resistance and power out of control over these narrow points of passage. Schouten reveals the connections between these road…
Paths of authority, roads of resistance: Ambiguous rural infrastructure and slippery stabilization in eastern DR Congo
Response to Daniel E. Agbiboa’s Review of Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Infrastructural frontiers: Terrains of resistance at the material edge of the state
This introduction to the special issue lays out some of the theoretical underpinnings of the notion of the ‘infrastructural frontier’. We begin by considering infrastructures as material geographies of power, before moving on to highlight how broader processes of order-making and resistance often become operational at the material edges of states: the places where transport and communication networks peter out and give way to terrains less amenab…
Buffering State-making: Geopolitics in the Sudd Marshlands of South Sudan
This paper explores the history and ongoing transformation of the South Sudanese Sudd marshlands as a buffer zone in a variety of subsequent projects of domination and their subversion. Its argument will be that the contemporary geopolitics of the Sudd cannot be understood properly without unwinding the historical layers of contestation and conflict around these projects of control and their reversal, projects which have sought to shape and have …
Roadblock Geographies: A Typology of Extraction, Circulation, and Authority in Conflict
Roadblocks and checkpoints have become ubiquitous features of conflict‐affected borderlands, yet their political and economic significance remains unevenly theorised. While existing scholarship has documented their role in financing armed actors and shaping everyday mobility, less attention has been paid to how roadblocks relate to the underlying transport geographies within which they operate. This article advances debates on extractivism, circu…
The Politics of Passage: Studying Checkpoints and Claim Making in Conflict‐affected Settings
Roadblocks, or checkpoints, are obligatory passage points that are erected by entities claiming authority over a given crossing. They are often the most common everyday interface between civilians and armed actors in conflict‐affected contexts, but are overlooked in studies on either trade or authority amidst conflict. This article, which introduces a special issue on the topic, argues that roadblocks are a useful empirical entry point to questio…
Isbaaro: Checkpoints and World Making beyond the State in Somalia
This article examines the dynamics of checkpoint authority in Somalia, focusing on how kinship, mobility and checkpoint practices intersect to shape political and social orders. Challenging the notion that checkpoint governance is either an expression of state‐like power or indicative of the state's absence, the authors argue that Somali checkpoints ( isbaaro ) must be understood in relation to the militarization and commercialization of clan‐bas…
Political science (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (7 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Corporate governance (4 works)